To the opponents of the tush push, the evidence was clear: TV cameras caught the Philadelphia Eagles guards clearly moving forward before the ball was snapped when they ran the play on Sunday afternoon in Kansas City. That, they cried, was more proof that the controversial play should be banned.
To the Eagles, though, that damning evidence might not have been as clear as it seemed.
“I think that the one clip I saw of it was slowed down so much that I’m not sure you can see that to the naked eye,” Eagles coach Nick Sirianni said. “I mean, it was slowed down so much, and I get how we can manipulate things and show things like that. But can you see that in the naked eye, right? Well, there’s things they do on defense that sometimes you can’t see to the naked eye all the time.
“You could do that with a lot of plays on football and slow it down. The referees have a hard job. They have to make split-second decisions that are happening at this speed. You see that sometimes with pass interference, too. They slow it down where it’s really slow with the remote. You’re like, ‘Well, yeah, this one you can see that it might be on this.’”
The Eagles’ entire offensive line appeared to line up in the neutral zone, with a couple players moving before the snap, in one late instance of the tush push versus the Chiefs. (Photo by Scott Winters/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
In other words, they’re not worried about the anti-tush push version of the Zapruder film. They remain unrepentant about a play that the NFL seems to despise, mostly because the Eagles run it so well. A measure to ban the play fell just two votes short of passing this past spring.
“I mean, I think it’s an exciting play,” Sirianni said. “Obviously, there’s been a lot of discussion about it and I think it’s kind of a cool thing, obviously, how much people debate it, how much people discuss it.
“I always think there’s a beauty when everyone knows what you’re going to run. Isn’t that football? They know exactly what’s coming and they either can stop it or can’t stop it.”
It’s safe to say that the Eagles are getting pretty tired of the criticism of the tush push — especially the suggestion they sometimes hear that the unstoppable play is a reason they keep winning.
The Eagles have effectively deployed the tush push in most all of their biggest games the past few years. (Photo by David Buono/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
“I understand it. I understand the outrage,” Eagles left tackle Jordan Mailata said on Sports Radio 94 WIP in Philadelphia on Tuesday. “What I don’t understand is them using it as an excuse to why we won the game. I think it’s incredibly disrespectful to our defense and our special teams who balled out that game, who had our backs when we weren’t moving the ball or weren’t doing anything.
“When I see those things … that kind of irks me a little bit. That pisses me off. To kind of base off a short-yardage play that is a football play and say that we won the game off that, but not how our defense played or not how our special teams played, putting us in those positions, I think it’s bullcrap, pardon my French. I just think it’s rubbish. It’s absolute rubbish, man. It makes my blood boil just thinking about it.”
Ralph Vacchiano is an NFL Reporter for FOX Sports. He spent six years covering the Giants and Jets for SNY TV in New York, and before that, 16 years covering the Giants and the NFL for the New York Daily News. Follow him on Twitter at @RalphVacchiano.
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